


The Devil, Herself

by Neffectual



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon Trans Character, F/F, Incorrect Pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2093367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grelle and Madam Red, before Ciel got involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil, Herself

**Author's Note:**

> Grelle's understanding that she is a woman comes after a long piece of incorrect pronouns. I apologise for that.

_And it may have been said that her hair was red_  
 _And her lips from the devil himself:_  
 _And wherever she went, the devil she sent_  
 _To a murder of rich, bloody wealth._

His blood sings in exultant prayer at the moment she plunges the blade in and he comes to her. He whispers sweetly, tasting the blood and the wave of perversion rolling off her. This is the first time, he face a mask of fear at his discovery, but swiftly, her hands clasped with his as she stands, a tiny figure in bloody clothes, shoes spattered; delicate and deadly, and he realises this is what he wants to be. Everything he has ever wanted is right here in front of him, and it makes him hungrier than he has ever known.

It was she who first taught him that beauty, whilst not being a solely female trait, is a wholly human trait. In order to find it, he would have to humanize himself, accept their definitions of beauty, their narrow little horizons about the ideas of life and death, about how a woman is beautiful, but her corpse isn't, flowers are, but a headstone isn't. So many parochial little rules to remember, to stick to, and yet, whilst she teaches those rules, she teaches him that they are not the be all and end all. The rules border the possibilities, but do not restrain you to remain within the guidelines.

One night, they go body-snatching, because there's money in it, and why glorify the dead when you decree no one can love them? Better there be a use for them, be it on the slab of a young doctor, fresh out of school, or in jars in schools around the country, teaching children what the inside of you looks like. She sends a brain back to her nephew, a spoilt child, apparently, who never sends a thank you note. They go to the graveyard, and she surprises him by being willing to dig, willing to claw back the earth and carry her share of the body. He finds her beautiful in the moonlight, dirt under her nails, her hem torn, reeking of grave-dirt and lilies. Later, as he presses himself to her naked body, he'll catch the scent of embalming fluid, and wonder, afterwards, if she didn't have a vested interest in the harvesting of parts herself.

She understands, she says, the beauty of transformation. She is the one he models himself on, and she never once laughs, not at the way the bob haircut is so inappropriate for him, the way his stockings are always torn, or crooked. She merely takes her time explaining all the ways a woman builds herself up, delivering the secrets of the feminine mystique straight to him, and never thinking that he will do aught with it but use it for himself. After all, to know these secrets is to be a woman, and in that, she gives him exactly what he needs. There are pieces of him which will never pass for female, but so, she says, are there on many women round about. The secret is in directing the eye away from those tell-tale places, and feminising the rest. No one looks too closely if you give them enough reasons not to.

It's the smile, mostly, that he has trouble with. He's untrained, like a young girl, all inappropriate curves of mouth and teeth, as if his corsets have been cut. She can smile like he does, blood-thirsty and rich, but he can not smile in that parlour-appropriate manner, that small, demure curve of mouth which suggests at once that she knows all sorts of things a woman shouldn't, but is too polite to speak them aloud. It is this look which has made her so renowned, this smile which pours raw sensuality into the room, yet does not answer any of the questions this arouses. His smile, broad as it is, and sinful, merely causes eyes to turn away and downward, and women to scrutinise him for lines unbefitting of a woman, for a dress not quite perfect. He would too easily be dismissed from polite society.

Luckily, the two of them together are very much impolite society, hands where gentleman's hands never wander, skirts at a height to which ladies would never raise them, red lips smeared with the same shade of lipstick leaving marks on porcelain skin, cold and smooth. The problem strikes when their mutual impropriety leads to pauses, stutters, moments in which her incapable womb gives phantom struggles, scares which leave him struggling and give her nothing but a red smear between her thighs, that colour she's so fond of, wearing her down in a thousand myriad ways. And it is in one of these moments that they strike the plan, that they decide their spree can become a little more blood, a little more real. It is in one of these moments that he takes her hand, and she smiles, petting his cheek softly with a hand which they both pretend isn't shaking.

He goes the funeral, as much as he can with the church involved, lies on the roof in her dress, her heels, his hair red, glasses matching, nails impeccable, the fabric of her coat on the roof tiles beneath him. He wears her lipstick, and smiles, finally having learnt to repress everything as he pushes down the grief, the guilt, the things he isn't supposed to hear. Her memory lives on strong within him, within the copy of her he will craft out of himself. He will wear her coat like he will wear her mannerisms, her heart, her designs, and he will know, as much as she ever knew, that she was beautiful. She will know, above all things, that she is beautiful. She will become the woman she was always meant to be.

_And yes, it may have been said, after she was dead_  
 _That the devil about her did haunt:_  
 _But who's to say that after that day_  
 _That wasn't what she did want?_


End file.
